Don't Fret, Just Text
Turning your cell phone on at the theatre may just get you talking to your neighbor
By Eliza Bent
Pennsylvania Ballet urged Nutcracker audiences to talk back, via text. Courtesy of Pennsylvania Ballet.
Challenge
Can the mobile craze be turned to theatres' advantage?
Plan
Have theatregoers vote with their phones in fun polls.
Key Players
PNC Bank, Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance, Philly Live Arts Festival, Pennsylvania Ballet.
What Worked
Audience mingling; more online traffic at Philly Fun Guide; ideas for future marketing campaigns.
What Didn't
One vote per phone excludes some audience members; high cost; tough to measure effect on ticket sales.
What's Next
Extending strategy to Twitter and Facebook; more thematic integration into artistic programming.
When it comes to cell phones, you may pick your poison: BlackBerrys, Androids, flip, brick, smart and not-so-smart phones. Everyone is mobile these days, especially young people. A recent Kaiser Family Foundation study found that U.S. kids aged 8 to 18 spend more than 53 hours a week online, playing video games, watching television and, of course, text messaging. Is our culture headed for collapse?
Not necessarily. Research at England's University of Coventry has suggested that text messaging demands the same "phonological awareness" necessary to learn correct spelling. And let's not forget other wildly clever ways in which SMS-ing can enable humanitarianism. "I need a better word than 'unprecedented' or 'amazing' to describe what's happened with the text-message program," Robert Lowe of the American Red Cross has said, with regard to texted donations that poured more than $22 million into Haiti relief efforts just five days after the devastating January earthquake. Is there a way to channel the prevalence of texting for the good of theatre?
Many would argue against it. We're all familiar with curtain-call speeches that request theatregoers to turn off their noisemaking devices. Take the earnest opening speech at Taylor Mac's The Lily's Revenge at New York's HERE Arts Center in Dec. '09: The glittery host expounded at length on how theatre is a rare societal outpost where people willingly turn off cell phones and in doing so create a kind of ephemeral communal solidarity. Running at approximately five-and-a-half hours, The Lily's Revenge had multiple intermissions, but the curtain caller asked attendees to shut off mobile devices for the entire evening: "You know, to, like, make community."
Some theatrical events, however, have flipped cell phone customs around. Gina Crusco's New York production of Così fan Tutte: Defining Women was an adapted opera that asked audience members to text votes on possible couple pairings—a process that determined which version of the show would be presented. "Texti fan tutte" was the name of the game.
The Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance (GPCA) launched its "Turn Your Cell Phone On" campaign in September '09 at the Philadelphia Live Arts festival. PNC Bank, whose Arts Alive program supports innovative approaches to audience engagement, funded GPCA's purchase of technology for live polling and LED screens so theatregoers could watch the results of their collective input in real time. Seven out of 16 shows from the Live Arts Festival were selected to partake in the program, which asked texters to vote on how much they liked what they saw on a scale of: Amazing, Very Good, I Liked It, Had Its Moments and Not So Great. "The value system was kind of controversial," concedes Robin Barnes of Live Arts. "Even though most of the reviews were great, I think a lot of the artists felt odd being 'ranked.'" All told, 11 percent of audience members at the seven shows voted—not bad considering the program was devised in August and barely had time to roll out before the September festivities kicked off. Barnes hopes next year's voting questions will be tailored to each show.
John McInerney, GPCA vice president of marketing and communications, had farther-reaching aspirations: to drive traffic to GPCA's Philly Fun Guide, an online public entertainment calendar, by inspiring theatregoers to share their opinions more widely. "There were about 150 reviews posted online in two weeks," he enthuses, explaining that's about five times the typical number.
During the Pennsylvania Ballet's The Nutcracker this winter, balletgoers had two opportunities to vote on Nutcracker-specific questions. At intermission: Which character in the first act would you like to be? And after the show: What was your favorite scene? "At first we limited it to one vote per phone, but this didn't work for families that had one cell phone and three kids," says public relations manager Marissa Montenegro of Pennsylvania Ballet. "We changed that after the first night to enable people to vote as many times as they liked." A total of 2,443 votes came in over the course of the 12 performances. (Snow Flake was by far the favored first-act character, which will be useful information for strategically marketing next year's Nutcracker.)
No identifying cell phone information was captured during either campaign. This was a particular concern for Nutcracker parents who had youngsters voting. McInerney and Montenegro both stressed the importance of volunteers who soothed parental anxieties. Program inserts described the texting initiative and noted that it was free of charge (unless your service charged for texting). Unlike "American Idol" texts, these didn't generate any income.
But did people actually interact with each other while staring into screens and typing away? "You bet," asserts Montenegro, who describes grandchildren showing proud grandparents how to SMS. Montenegro recalls another scene in which two families had a friendly voting competition and watched the live onscreen tally. McInerney cedes that it has been difficult to gauge the success of a program designed to boost intangible factors such as awareness and engagement. Another drawback to continuing these efforts is cost. PNC gave $50,000 to GPCA, and each project's price tag has ranged from $8,000 to $15,000. LED screens and technology for tallying votes don't exactly come cheap.
What's next? Live Arts's Barnes spoke about continued Twitter feeds (one for Philadelphia Arts was created out of this last festival) and advanced Facebook pages. Pennsylvania Ballet's Montenegro hopes her company's experiment will be adapted to its performances aimed at adult audiences. Meanwhile, McInerney has been in talks with the Philadelphia Orchestra about how Rite of Spring might interact with texting. After all, Stravinsky's score was radical in its time—the composer might not have minded shaking things up SMS-style.
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